US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to punish Spain on trade over its resistance to NATO’s newly adopted defense spending target of five percent of GDP.

 

“They want a little bit of a free ride, but they'll have to pay it back to us on trade, because I'm not going to let that happen. It's unfair,” Trump told journalists at the end of NATO's summit in The Hague.

 

Spain was the only country among the 32 NATO member states that declined to endorse the new 5 percent target, opting instead to stick with the previous goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.